


Satchmo

by sahiya



Category: White Collar
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Marriage, Puppies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-06
Updated: 2014-01-06
Packaged: 2018-01-07 16:16:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1121924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sahiya/pseuds/sahiya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the moment Peter moved out of his parents’ house when he was eighteen, he looked forward to the day he could have a dog again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Satchmo

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aragarna](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Aragarna).



> Happy Holidays, Aragarna!

From the moment Peter moved out of his parents’ house when he was eighteen, he looked forward to the day he could have a dog again. He’d had dogs all through his childhood - big dogs, mostly retrievers and shepherds - and he missed them something awful when he went away to college. 

He’d thought, once he was done with school, that he’d be able to have one again, but first came baseball and the expectation of life on the road, and then came Quantico, and then came New York and a series of a small, crappy apartments that wouldn’t have been good for a dog even if he’d been allowed to have one. It wasn’t until he was married to Elizabeth and they’d managed to scrape together the down payment for a house in Brooklyn that he was finally able to seriously (and responsibly) consider having a dog again. 

El was not overly thrilled with the idea at first. Not because she didn’t love animals; she’d had a mix of dogs and cats growing up, and Peter knew that she missed having one around. But she was busy, she was quick to point out, and Peter was _really_ busy, still trying to establish himself in the New York office, and was this really the right time?

“I’m tired of waiting for the right time,” Peter said. “Neither of us is ever going to be less busy until we retire, and I’d like to have a dog again before I’m sixty-five.”

Elizabeth sighed. “What about a cat? They’re a lot less work, and they don’t mind being home by themselves. Some cats are very dog-like,” she added, before Peter could protest that he just didn’t understand cats. “I bet if we got a friendly one, you’d like it just fine.”

Peter frowned. “You can’t take a cat jogging or to the park.”

“Well, true,” she said. She drummed her fingers on the edge of the table and looked at him. “All right, I’m open to the idea, but we need to think about this. I don’t want us to get a dog just to have to keep it in a crate all day, it isn’t fair.”

Peter managed - just barely - not to give a juvenile fist pump of triumph.

Eventually they worked it out. Peter would walk or run the dog in the morning, and El would walk him in the evening. El’s job was flexible enough to let her work from home a couple days a week, but on days she had to go into the office, they’d pay a teenager from down the street a couple bucks to come in and spend an hour or two with the dog, maybe take it for a walk or play fetch in the backyard so that it wasn’t completely wired when they got home. 

El got to pick the name. Peter had a whole list of names lined up, but he knew when not to argue. 

They got themselves on the waiting list of a very reputable labrador breeder up in Westchester, but she had nearly a year-long wait. In the meantime, Peter took to haunting the SPCA website. Living conditions in New York being what they were, there were a lot of small dogs - Chihuahuas and Bichons and Malteses. Peter was sure they were very nice, but he couldn’t go for a nice, long Saturday morning run with a Maltese. Any shepherds or retrievers that came up were inevitably adopted by the time Peter was able to call. Peter grumbled that getting a dog had never been so complicated when he was a kid and resigned himself to the fact that the process was going to take forever. 

But when it happened, it actually happened _fast_.

Peter was perusing a new case file for a guy he’d mentally dubbed _James Bonds_ when his phone rang. He glanced at it and raised his eyebrows. “Hey, hon,” he answered. 

“Are you working late tonight?”

Peter frowned. “No, not unless something comes up in the next forty-five minutes. I had some stuff I was going to bring home. Why?”

“Because we need to drive to Westchester. The breeder just called me. She’s got a litter and someone backed out. We were at the top of the waiting list.”

“Really?” Peter said.

“Really. Can you pick me up?”

Peter glanced at his watch, then considered the time of day. “Be there in thirty,” he said, and shoved James Bonds’s file into his briefcase. 

The drive up to Westchester was slow and irritating. It was nearly seven o’clock before they pulled up in front of the breeder’s house, and Peter couldn’t help but worry that someone else might have gotten there faster. “She wouldn’t do that,” El said. “She called me, and I said we were on our way. She wouldn’t give him away from under us like that.”

Peter sighed. “You’re right, I know. It’s just, if this doesn’t work out, it could be another year.” And though he could wait another year, he didn’t want to. He’d gone enough years without a dog. 

The breeder was a nice, middle-aged woman who had been doing this for over a decade and had an impeccable reputation. She greeted them at the door, introduced them to her husband, and then took them to meet the puppy. 

“Nicky” - a name that Peter knew El would change immediately - was the last of his litter, but it wasn’t because of his personality. The family that had reserved him had hemmed and hawed, the breeder told them, sounding annoyed, before finally deciding the kids weren’t old enough. He scampered over as soon as El and Peter walked in the room and stood with his paws on El’s shin, as though begging to be picked up. El crouched down and he crawled into her lap, giving her puppy kisses and nuzzling her face. Then Peter crouched down and the puppy jumped off El’s lap and immediately crouched down, tail wagging, as though begging to be played with. Peter threw a ball for him - gently and not far - and the puppy took off after it, skidding on the newspapers that were spread across the floor. 

“What do you think?” the breeder asked. “I know it’s sooner than you were prepared for.”

Peter glanced at El. She nodded. He stood up. “We’ll take him,” he said. 

Peter left El to work out the details and write the check while he went to a nearby PetSmart and stocked up on food, dishes, toys, a fuzzy dog bed, and a crate to get the little guy home in. By the time he returned, the puppy had worn himself out playing with El and conked out in her lap. He didn’t even wake up when Peter put him in his crate with a blanket that smelled like his mama. Peter shook hands with the breeder and her husband, and then they were on their way. Peter couldn’t stop smiling. 

“So,” he asked El, as they turned onto the interstate. “What are you thinking? For a name, I mean.”

In the passenger seat, El twisted round to peer inside the crate, where the puppy was still sleeping, and then looked at Peter.

“How do you feel about ‘Satchmo’?”

_Fin._


End file.
